Hybrid laws: constitutionalizing private governance networks

s.a.: Das Recht hybrider Netzwerke. Zeitschrift für das gesamte Handelsrecht und Wirtschaftsrecht 165, 2001, 550-575.. Italienische Fassung: Diritti ibridi: la costituzionalizzazione delle reti private di governance. In: Gunther Teubner, Costituzionalismo societario. Armando, Roma 2004 (im Erscheinen)

Building trust? Conditional cash transfers and social capital

In this paper we propose a measure of social capital based on the behaviour in a public good game. We play the public good game within 28 groups in two similar neighborhoods in Cartagena, Colombia, one of which had been targeted for over two years by a conditional cash transfer program that has an important social component. The level of cooperation we observe in the ‘treatment’ community is considerably higher than in the ‘control’ community. The two neighborhoods, however, although similar in many dimensions, turned out to be significantly different in other observable variables. The result we obtain in terms of cooperation, however, is robust to controls for these observable differences. In the last part of the paper we also compare our measure of social capital with other more traditional measures that have been used in the literature

Communications and Cooperation in Public Network Situations

This paper focuses on sharing the costs and revenues of maintaining a public network communication structure.Revenues are assumed to be bilateral and communication links are publicly available but costly.It is assumed that agents are located at the vertices of an undirected graph in which the edges represent all possible communication links.We take the approach from cooperative game theory and focus on the corresponding network game in coalitional form which relates any coalition of agents to its highest possible net benefit, i.e., the net benefitt corresponding to an optimal operative network.Although finding an optimal network in general is a difficult problem, it is shown that corresponding network games are (totally) balanced.In the proof of this result a specific relaxation, duality and techniques of linear production games with committee control play a role.Sufficient conditions for convexity of network games are derived.Possible extensions of the model and its results are discussed.cooperative games;communication;public sector

Social Innovation in Service Delivery: New Partners and Approaches

[Excerpt] This report presents the findings of a research project exploring the involvement of new partners – in particular, the social partners, civil society and people in vulnerable situations – in social innovation. For the purposes of the research, ‘social innovation’ is defined as new ideas (products, services and models) that simultaneously resolve societal challenges, meet social needs and create new social relationships among the groups concerned. Social innovation can involve such aspects as new participation in decision-making, services affecting the social situation of specific target groups (provided commercially or not) and changes in social care systems. It is part of cultural development and societal change. The research was carried out at EU level – focusing especially on the role of the European Social Fund (ESF) in social innovation – and in six Member States: Austria, Bulgaria, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Sweden. It examined the innovation and social partnership culture in each country, and analysed to what extent national-level policies have been triggered by EU policy. The research also includes three case studies carried out in Ireland, Slovenia and Sweden, presenting initiatives that the social partners, or those in vulnerable situations, have been involved in designing and implementing. The objective of this study is to inform, with an evidence-based approach, the policy debate on social innovation, and contribute to a better understanding of effective and sustainable processes. The study also aims to explore how social innovation can be most effectively supported in different phases: from initiation, through consistent delivery of good quality services, to identification of good practice

An Assessment of the Commission’s 2011 Schengen Governance Package: Preventing abuse by EU member states of freedom of movement? CEPS Liberty and Security in Europe No. 47, 26 March 2012

The Schengen system has been at the centre of sharp controversy throughout 2011 and the early months of 2012 arising from attempts by several member state governments to challenge the right to the free movement of persons and the abolition of internal border checks. The speech delivered by Nicolas Sarkozy early this month (March 2012), as part of the French presidential campaign, in which he threatened to suspend France’s participation in Schengen illustrates this phenomenon. This paper examines the European Commission’s response to the Schengen controversies, namely the Schengen Goverance Package published in September 2011 and currently under negotiation in Council and the European Parliament. It assesses the scope and added value of the Package’s two new legislative proposals (a new Schengen evaluation mechanism and revised rules for restating internal border checks) by looking at the origins and features of the debate surrounding liberty of circulation in the Schengen area. The paper addresses the following questions: first, are these new rules necessary and appropriate to effectively respond to unlawful security derogations and restrictions to liberty of circulation? Second, would their adoption provide an effective response to current and future political tensions and national governments’ policies against free movement, such as those evidenced in 2011 and 2012 and for them to expand to other member states? And finally, is the Schengen Governance Package well designed to safeguard the free movement of persons, or is it rather oriented towards further strengthening the security apparatus of Schengen